(The following article was written by Rev. Tom Brock of pastorsstudy.org. ​You can follow Pastor Brock on Facebook - here and twitter - here.)

As in the past, the current February 2017 issue of "Living Lutheran" of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America continues to attempt to normalize homosexual behavior and transgenderism in the Church. One article "I'm a Lutheran" highlights a Lutheran choir director who talks about his "husband". Another article is entitled "Equal participants in the body of Christ: LGBTQ members find home in ELCA congregations". It talks about a homosexual man with a "husband", how they encountered homophobia, and how they found acceptance in an ELCA congregation. The article also highlights the ELCA's first officially ordained transgender pastor. She is a woman, who has "transitioned" and whom the article refers to as "he".

Back in 2009 when the ELCA decided to ordain practicing homosexuals, it made no such decision to ordain transsexual pastors. But that has not stopped the ELCA leadership from doing so. Also, the 2009 decision acknowledged that there is a difference of opinion among ELCA Lutherans, some believe homosexual behavior is sinful, and some do not. Both views are to be allowed in the ELCA. But the view that homosexual behavior is sinful, to my knowledge, has never received print in "Living Lutheran". The conservatives who are left in the ELCA--which are fewer and fewer--need to request a balance. How about articles sharing how conservative congregations deal with loving people with same-sex attraction while still maintaining the Bible's teaching homosexual behavior is wrong?

And the ELCA continues to decline. The current issue also talks about the state of ELCA's seminaries, which are facing declining enrollment, financial problems, layoffs and the need to merge to stay alive. The seminaries' problems have become more acute since the ELCA's 2009 homosexual decision. More and more people are leaving the ELCA, with their money.

". . . It’s always difficult to resist the pull of sin, but in our culture it’s made all the harder by the fact that sin and temptation are broadcast directly into our faces relentlessly, at all hours of the day, and each form has its own advocacy group, its own collection of heretics busily cutting and pasting the Bible together so that their favorite brand of evil can be excused. If we look, we can always find some “church” somewhere insisting that our pet sin is actually a blessing. Whatever temptation we fight, there will always be a sizable group of “Christians” erasing words from Scripture and filling them in again like Mad Libs so as to convince you that God wants you to succumb to it.

The moral obligations that accompany faith are hard enough to fulfill, but these “Christians” and these “churches” make it much harder by whispering in your ear exactly what you want to hear: “Don’t worry about morality. Christ carried His cross all the way to the top of the hill, but you can drop yours here at the base and relax. Christ doesn’t want you to suffer or sacrifice. He wants you to enjoy yourself! That’s why He died!”

That’s the easy faith. The tempting one. The faith that preaches a Christ who died so that we may be freed TO sin, rather than freed FROM sin. A difference of only one word, but the gap between them is as wide as the gap between Heaven and Hell."